The Golden Woman

Mercy watched him with angry eyes. The man added impertinence to his foolishness, and the combination was altogether too much for her temper. But for the fact that she required his services, she would well have wished that he might fall and break his neck. But her chief concern was to reach her destination, so she watched him climb the long steps in the hope that some comforting result might follow.

As the man rose higher and higher, and his figure grew smaller, his climb possessed an even greater interest for Mercy Lascelles than she admitted. She began to appreciate the peril of it, and peril, in others, always held her fascinated.

He was forced to move slowly, clinging closely with both hands to the steps above him. It would be easy to slip and fall, and she waited for that fall. She waited with nerves straining and every faculty alert.

So absorbed was she that she had forgotten the horses, forgotten her own position, everything, in the interest of the moment. Had it been otherwise, she must have noticed that something had attracted the drooping horses' attention. She must have observed the suddenly lifted heads, and pricked ears. But these things passed her by, as did the approach of a solitary figure bearing a burden of freshly taken fox pelts, which quite enveloped its massive shoulders.

The man was approaching round a slight bend in the trail, and the moment the waiting cart came into view, he stood, startled at the apparition. Then he whistled softly, and glanced back over the road he had come. He looked at a narrow point where the trail suddenly ended, a sharp break where the cliff dropped away abruptly, and further progress could only be made by an exhausting downward climb by a skilled mountaineer.

Then he came slowly on, his gray eyes closely scrutinizing the figure in the cart. In a moment he saw that it was a woman, and, by her drooping pose, recognized that she was by no means young. His eyes took on a curious expression--half doubt, half wonder, and his face grew a shade paler under his tan. But the change only lasted a few seconds. He quickly pulled himself together, and, shaking his white head thoughtfully, continued his way toward the vehicle with the noiseless gait which moccasins ever give to the wearer. He reached the cart quite unobserved. The woman's whole attention was absorbed by the climbing man, and the newcomer smiled curiously as he passed a greeting.

"You've hit a wrong trail, haven't you?" he inquired.

The woman in the cart gave a frantic start, and clutched at the side rail as though for support. Then her eyes came on a level with the man's smiling face, and fear gave way to a sudden expression of relentless hatred.